Texan songwriter Hayes Carll was hit it big last year with "She Left Me for Jesus," a funny, churlish tune that won the Americana Music Association's Song of the Year award and that Don Imus called the greatest country song ever written. But there's more to Hayes Carll than that one song. Hayes honed his craft for several years in the now-destroyed bars of the Bolivar Pensinsula near Galveston, and he's accumulated a body of storytelling songs with enough of an edge to cut through the resistance of a tough crowd. With influences from Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, and Tom Waits, whose "I Don't Want to Grow Up" he covered on his recent "Trouble in Mind" album for Lost Highway, Hayes puts it all together into a fresh sound that brings honky-tonk music to a new generation.